Abnormal Security hires ex-ServiceNow exec as CFO as company starts prepping for IPO
Lisa Banks, Abnormal Security’s new chief financial officer.
Abnormal Security
Abnormal Security, a startup selling email security software to companies, said on Wednesday that it’s hired former ServiceNow finance executive Lisa Banks as chief financial officer as the company gears up to prepare for an IPO.
Abnormal is going after a longstanding market, which includes incumbents Mimecast and Proofpoint, adding a layer of artificial intelligence that spots attacks in email messages. Other startups such as Material Security and Sublime Security offer competing email tools.
“We’re disrupting the legacy market, and the approach around AI and human behavior is very unique,” Banks said in an interview.
With Donald Trump returning to the White House this week, investors are bullish that they’ll see a strengthening initial public offering market, particularly for technology, after a three-year dry spell. Among the few tech IPOs last year were Reddit, Rubrik and ServiceTitan. AI chipmaker Cerebras filed IPO paperwork but has yet to float shares on the Nasdaq as planned.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, whose Wall Street firm tends to compete with Morgan Stanley when it comes to leading high-profile offerings, said last week that IPOs are “going to pick up.” At an event hosted by Cisco, Solomon said that the mood is changing and that there’s a “more constructive kind of optimism” when it comes to the overall market.
Banks said Abnormal doesn’t have a specific timeline for its IPO, but she said a year and a half should be enough time to prepare. Revenue is already predictable, thanks to the company’s multiyear deals and healthy renewal rates, she said.
“We will be profitable in the future,” Banks said.
Abnormal said in August that it had achieved more than $200 million in annualized revenue, with year-over-year growth above 100%. At that time, Abnormal said the company was valued at $5.1 billion. Investors include CrowdStrike, Greylock Partners, Insight Partners, Menlo Ventures and Wellington Management.
After seven years at ServiceNow, where she eventually became senior vice president of finance, Banks spent almost three years at restaurant payments startup SpotOn. Banks said she was eager to get back into enterprise software.
Abnormal is led by Evan Reiser, who co-founded the company in 2018 after almost three years in product management at Twitter. Banks said that Reiser is obsessed with customers and that he spends loads of time with chief information officers and security heads. She said that over time Abnormal expects to expand beyond email security.
In her role, Banks intends to work with bankers and learn from CFOs who have taken companies public. She said her finance group is busy implementing a forecasting tool, which is likely to be critical once the company is public and in the habit of providing guidance to investors.
Abnormal operates remotely, with offices in San Francisco and Las Vegas and in a WeWork space in San Jose, California, Banks said. The company reached 1,000 employees earlier this month, a spokesperson said.
Banks’s predecessor was Smita Sanadhya, who joined Abnormal from Okta in February 2024, and left the role after seven months. Sanadhya is now an advisor.
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Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group Corp., speaks during the company’s annual general meeting in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, June 27, 2025.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Intel and SoftBank announced on Monday that the Japanese conglomerate will make a $2 billion investment in the embattled chipmaker.
SoftBank will pay $23 per share for Intel’s common stock, which closed on Monday at $23.66. The shares rose about 6% in extended trading to $25.
The investment makes SoftBank the fifth-biggest Intel shareholder, according to FactSet. It’s a vote of support for Intel, which hasn’t been able to take advantage of the artificial intelligence boom in advanced semiconductors and has spent heavily to stand up a manufacturing business that’s yet to secure a significant customer.
“Masa and I have worked closely together for decades, and I appreciate the confidence he has placed in Intel with this investment,” Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a statement, referring to SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son.
Intel shares lost 60% of their value last year, their worst performance in the company’s more than half-century on the public market. The stock is up 18% in 2025 as of Monday’s close.
Tan took over as Intel CEO in March after his predecessor, Pat Gelsinger, was ousted in December.
Intel has been a major topic of discussion in Washington of late, due to the company’s role as the only American company capable of manufacturing the most advanced chips.
However, Intel’s foundry business, which is designed to manufacture chips for other companies, has yet to secure a major customer, a critical step towards stabilization and expansion. Last month, Intel said it would wait to secure orders before committing to certain future investment in its foundry.
Tan met with President Donald Trump last week after the president had called for the CEO’s resignation. The U.S. government is considering taking an equity stake in Intel, according to reports.
SoftBank, meanwhile, has become an increasingly large player in the global chip and AI markets.
In 2016, SoftBank acquired chip designer Arm in a deal worth about $32 billion at the time. Today the company is worth almost $150 billion. Arm-based chips are part of Nvidia’s systems that go into data centers.
And in March of this year, SoftBank announced plans to acquire another chip designer, Ampere Computing, for $6.5 billion.
SoftBank was also part of President Trump’s Stargate announcement in January, along with OpenAI and Oracle.
The three companies committed to invest an initial $100 billion and up to $500 billion over the next four years in the AI infrastructure project. Two months later, SoftBank led a $40 billion investment into OpenAI, the largest private tech deal on record.
“This strategic investment reflects our belief that advanced semiconductor manufacturing and supply will further expand in the United States, with Intel playing a critical role,” Son said in a statement.
Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, looks on during the closing bell at the Nasdaq Market in New York City on March 25, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
Palo Alto Networks reported better-than-expected quarterly results and issued upbeat guidance for the current period. The cybersecurity software vendor said Nir Zuk, who founded the company in 2005, is retiring from his role as chief technology officer.
The stock rose about 6% in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did compared to LSEG estimates:
- Earnings: 95 cents adjusted vs. 88 cents expected
- Revenue: $2.54 billion vs. $2.5 billion expected.
Revenue in the fiscal fourth quarter rose 16% from about $2.2 billion last year, the company said in a statement. Net income fell to about $254 million, or 36 cents per share, from about $358 million, or 51 cents per share, in the year-ago period.
The company also issued upbeat guidance for the fiscal first quarter. Earnings per share will be between 88 cents and 90 cents, Palo Alto said, topping an 85-cents estimate from StreetAccount.
For the full year, Palo Alto said revenue will range from $10.48 billion to $10.53 billion on adjusted earnings of $3.75 to $3.85 per share. Both estimates exceeded Wall Street’s projections.
Palo Alto said that for the fiscal first quarter, remaining purchase obligations, which tracks backlog, will range between $15.4 billion and $15.5 billion, surpassing a $15.07 billion estimate.
Last month, the company announced plans to buy Israeli identity security provider CyberArk for $25 billion. It’s the largest deal Palo Alto has made since its founding, and most ambitious in an acquiring spree that ramped up after CEO Nikesh Arora took the helm of the company in 2018.
Shares sold off sharply after the news broke and have yet to recover previous highs. The stock is down about 3% this year as of Monday’s close.
“We look for great products, a team that can execute in the product, and we let them run it,” Arora told CNBC following the announcement. “This is going to be a different challenge, but we’ve done well 24 times, so I’m pretty confident that our team can handle this.”
Lee Klarich, the company’s product chief, will replace Zuk as CTO and fill his position on the board.
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